The security theologians

Sunday

Feb 5, 2017 at 4:40 AM

By Tom Driscoll/Guest Columnist

One of the answers you’ll get when challenging the president’s actions on immigrants and refugees this past weekend, a supposed defense, is that the move to bar entry from a select number of Muslim majority nations and to freeze refugee settlement is only temporary —while we figure out what is going on —while we devise what we can call ‘extreme’ vetting for those entering the country. The president tweets that we’ve simply slammed shut the gate while the “bad dudes” are still outside. Now just give us some time to figure things out.

There’s just one problem with this line of defense. The realities of terror threat that present themselves are not unknowns as yet to be discovered by inquiring minds. The real and present dangers are complex — they may defy simplistic answers — but they are not unknown. Then again, I suspect the administration realizes that fact, that there’s no real timeline for figuring things out. Recall the many times as candidate that our president told us he would release his taxes at some future appropriate time.

Tomorrow creeps a petty pace.

If the administration were really set about figuring things out on the ground in a dangerous region, or within the workings of terror networks world wide, it probably would not have moved the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of National Intelligence to a secondary status within the National Security Council — while elevating White House arch political message manager, Steve Bannon, to a principal seat. You see that other quieter story of last weekend sheds some light on the lead narrative. The military’s insights, those of the intelligence agencies answerable to DNI, these are less important, mere fact, when stacked against the task of conjuring a compelling narrative. National Security is advanced, in the mind of our new administration, with a more artfully constructed, ideologically considered, politically saleable message. For that task they’ve brought in the big guns.

As chair of the NSC, we already had Gen. Michael Flynn, noted in the past for arguing “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL” (use of all caps all his on his twitter feed). The man was also quoted once referring to not just jihadi terrorism, but Islam as a whole, as “a political ideology [that] hides behind this notion of it being a religion ... a malignant cancer that has metastasized.” Now add to this mix of security experts Breitbart News’ own comparative theologian, Steve Bannon, who has likewise opined that “Islam is not a religion of peace,” and a president who could only be described as a “baby boomer, narcissistic, [who] wants to feel loved."

The president Bannon derided and dismissed thusly, in an interview for a right-wing online radio outlet in 2010, was George W. Bush. Forget about him. The real tough guys are here.

The other very adult defense you might encounter for the administration’s entry ban is that President Obama was doing it too. The seven Muslim majority nations singled out for the travel ban were cited for special treatment by the Obama administration just as well. No anti-Muslim bias here, folks. His middle name is Hussein for heaven’s sake.

Set aside for a moment the perversity of arguing that something must be done while we figure things out — because nothing is in place to protect us now! — and then citing the extant protections as precedent! Note instead that the special focus Obama’s administration brought to bear on the seven nations in question involved close vetting of visa applicants. Yes, that’s right, close vetting.

Applicants of the seven nations were not allowed exemptions to screening protocols allowed to other nationals from countries with better internal controls and where less fraught conditions on the ground persisted.

This might have slowed travel on account of the cautions being exercised, what it did not do is simply bar entry of a religious enemy. Obama’s policy was quite the opposite of a blanket travel ban and a freeze on accepting refugees. It was discerned, deliberate and practical policy focused upon actual protection.

I suspect the new administration’s security theologians see their task as something larger than all that though, larger than mere physical security.

Practical policies are never perfect. What appears more important to them just now is how they posit their narrative as brash and bravely opposed to the evils that weaker ones would abide. They are the ones willing to take up the harsher tools.

And even with all the protest they can claim a certain kind of success in this regard. As it stands now the first national security failure this administration faces will only serve to validate their immoderate stance, and shame their critics.

And the argument that the new administration’s policies only fuel our enemies and their ideologies, affirms the jihadists’ claim to Islam’s identity — well, that’s just the precious stuff of baby boomer narcissists, wanting to be loved. Just ask our message man.

Cruelty is now courage, panic an act of principle, and bigotry has become its own religion.